Leongatha
Project Overview
Mark and Marianna are winemakers and oenologists who spent years cultivating their vineyard and farm in South Gippsland while living in Melbourne’s inner west. They commissioned us to design a home that would allow them to finally live on the land they had been restoring: a certified Passive House built from cross-laminated timber, capable of operating off-grid, fire-resistant, and robust enough for the practical demands of a working vineyard.
The brief was as specific as it was memorable. They wanted bedrooms positioned to capture the arc of the Milky Way from their beds. They referenced the “Derelicte” aesthetic from Zoolander, seeking a home that would echo the character of the existing rusty corrugated sheds built from reclaimed railway steel. It had to be surrounded by herbs and edible plants for the family’s cooking. And it needed to sit lightly on the land, respecting the drainage, vegetation corridors and wildlife habitat they had spent years restoring.
A series of kitchen-table design discussions led to a home that blends naturally into its rural surroundings. With their deep commitment to organic production, permaculture and sustainability, Passive House standards and prefabricated CLT construction were clear choices. The home was completed in 2016 and has been operating off-grid ever since.
Project Details
- Location: Leongatha, South Gippsland, Victoria
- Project Type: New Home on Working Vineyard
- Certification: Passive House (certified)
- Construction: Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT)
- Gutex External Insulation
- Maxraft Insulated Slab
- Energy: All-electric, off-grid, solar PV
- Services: Rainwater harvesting, on-site septic treatment
- Completed: 2016
- Builder: Dale Roberts, APHI Projects
- CLT Supply: Bernward Buecheler, Macclesfield SA from Binderholz AT
- Passive House Certifier: Clare Parry – Grün Consulting
- Building Services: Fantech
- Photography by Tim Loft & Sunpath
Living on the Land
The home sits low in the landscape behind a grove of native trees, overlooking the dam and the rolling hills of South Gippsland beyond. The exterior is clad in rust-coloured sheeting that blends with the surrounding soil and echoes the aged farm sheds scattered across the property. From a distance, the home reads as another quiet rural structure belonging to its setting rather than imposed upon it.
Inside, the exposed CLT walls and ceilings, treated with natural oil, create a warm and enveloping interior unlike anything achievable with conventional materials. The warmth and grain of European spruce wraps every room, creating spaces that feel calm, natural and deeply comfortable. Cabinetry and tiles are introduced only where functionally necessary; everywhere else, the timber is the finish.
The open-plan layout centres on a large kitchen bench that has served as the family’s gathering point since the very first design discussions. Good produce and delicious food are really important to Marianna and Mark so it is appropriate that communal cooking and dining are central to their design, Living, dining and kitchen flow together under the CLT roof, with generous triple-glazed windows framing 360-degree views of their surrounding vineyards.
Eight Years On
In 2023, I revisited Mark and Marianna to see how the home had settled into its landscape. Their children, once toddlers, are now high schoolers who still stargaze from their beds. The herb and food gardens have flourished, integrating the home into a productive, self-sufficient landscape of vines, native planting and permaculture.
At the same well-worn kitchen bench where our early design conversations took place, I once again enjoyed their warm hospitality: homegrown organic food paired with wines from Mount Macleod and Caledonia Australis. Hearing how delighted they are with their comfortable, high-performing off-grid home after eight years of daily life was a genuine reward.
Construction Process
Cross-Laminated Timber Construction
The primary structure of this home is cross-laminated timber: large structural panels formed by bonding layers of solid European spruce boards at right angles to one another. Binderholz CLT panels serve as walls and roof, creating a complete structural shell from a single material system. The floor is a Full exposure, polished concrete slab with Maxraft insulation system
The panels were sourced from Europe via Bernward Buecheler in Macclesfield, South Australia, and assembled on site by Dale Roberts of APHI Projects, who won the 2024 Master Builders Victoria Regional Builder of the Year award for their work on this Passive House project. Read our full guide to engineered timber. Â
CLT was the right choice for this project for several reasons. The panels are digitally fabricated off-site using CNC machinery, with all openings, service penetrations and connections pre-cut with exceptional accuracy. This allowed the structural shell to be assembled rapidly on an exposed, elevated rural site where prolonged open construction would have been impractical. The simple orthogonal panel junctions and clean planar elements also suited the simple rural form, visible in the sharp overhanging roof eaves and unadorned geometry of the building.
Envelope and Cladding
The external walls were clad in a weather-resistant membrane followed by wood-fibre insulation and the rust-coloured metal sheeting that gives the home its distinctive character. This layered envelope achieves both the thermal performance required for Passive House certification and the bushfire resistance required for this rural location. The cladding was deliberately chosen to weather and age in sympathy with the landscape and the existing farm buildings on the property.
Concepts and Design Process
Reading the Site
To fully understand this site, we camped there. We observed the sun’s path across the sky through the days, the direction and strength of the breezes, and the quality of views in every direction, including the arc of the milky way at night. This process helped us select the ideal building location: overlooking the dam, with natural shelter from the southerly winds provided by the existing windbreak trees and by nestling its low profile just below the brow of the hill. This spot also had convenient access to existing vineyard infrastructure and the driveway providing good oversight.
The brief demanded a home that would sit carefully on the land, protecting the drainage patterns, native vegetation corridors and wildlife habitat that Mark and Marianna had spent years restoring. We positioned the building to preserve these systems and oriented it for optimum solar gain while capturing the sweeping rural views. Â
Form and Character
The design is a low-slung pavilion-style form nestled behind native trees. Its profile and cladding are drawn directly from the agricultural buildings of the region, with the “Derelicte” reference giving us permission to celebrate the beauty of rusty weathered, utilitarian materials rather than imposing a polished suburban aesthetic on a working rural property.
The layout was influenced by the transportability and dimensions of CLT panels, favouring simple rectangular plan forms and clean junctions. Inside, the exposed CLT creates a continuous timber interior that conceals the structural system and the finished surface in a single element. This is one of the great advantages of CLT: structure, insulation substrate and interior finish are all resolved in one material, reducing construction complexity and creating a coherent architectural expression throughout.
The bedrooms are positioned and their windows oriented to frame the night sky, fulfilling the clients’ wish to gaze out to the Milky Way from their beds. It is a detail that captures the spirit of the entire project: a home designed not just for performance, but for the specific pleasures of living on this particular piece of land.
Passive House Features
This home is a certified Passive House #6155 and can be viewed on the international register. Â
The Passive House measures include:
Triple-glazed Doepfner hardwood windows positioned and sized based on PHPP energy modelling, with external eave overhangs calibrated to prevent overheating on North, East & West-facing glazing during summer while maximising solar gain in winter.
A continuous highly airtight CLT building envelope with seals at every junction, verified through independent blower door testing. The measured airtightness of 0.32ac/h comfortably exceeds the Passive House threshold of less than 0.6 air changes per hour at 50 Pascals.
A Zehnder Q450 heat recovery ventilation system providing constant filtered fresh air to every room, recovering warmth from exhaust air and maintaining healthy indoor air quality year-round without needing to open windows. In this house we integrated a 3.5kW Daikin FDXS35 reverse cycle bulkhead split system into the HRV supply system to provide the small amount of supplementary heating and cooling the home requires.Â
Dedicated services cupboards house the Zehnder heat recovery ventilation system and hot water heat pump cylinder, keeping mechanical systems accessible but silent and out of sight. Excess heat from the cylinder supplies some of the heat gains needed to meet passive house. Â
Read our full guide to Passive House / Passivhaus here.Â
Off-Grid Systems & Sustainability
The home is in a low risk BAL12.5 area, but was sill designed for moderate bushfire resilience, with fire-resistant cladding and landscaping appropriate to its risk rating.Â
Rainwater is harvested and stored on site, including a CFA bushfire connection.  A standalone taylex septic system treats all wastewater so it can be reused for irrigation and bushfire fighting. Â
Low embodied energy materials throughout, including exposed CLT panels and maxraft fully insulated polished concrete slab with recycled aggregate and low CO2 cement.Â
We exclusively used low-VOC finishes, and construction methods chosen to minimise waste and environmental impact.
The greatest thing was collaborating with good people.
There are so many aspects of the building that we love:
The thermal performance of the house has to be experienced to be believed!
The way the entire house aligns with the changing seasons connects us to farming life beautifully.
Marianna & Mark
Project Videos
We have compiled detailed videos of the project from concept to completion. Â
Click to visit our youtube channel. Â
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